{"id":115023,"date":"2016-02-07T01:15:09","date_gmt":"2016-02-07T01:15:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2016\/02\/07\/amemait-actual-leia-organa-feralkith\/"},"modified":"2016-02-07T01:15:09","modified_gmt":"2016-02-07T01:15:09","slug":"amemait-actual-leia-organa-feralkith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2016\/02\/07\/amemait-actual-leia-organa-feralkith\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

amemait<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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actual-leia-organa<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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feralkith<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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weary-hearted-queen<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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@the Star Wars fandom: I\u2019d like to throw my two cents in on the whole\u00a0\u201cLeia was never even tempted by the Dark Side\u201d trend that is seemingly going on right now. Firstly, yes, I understand the joke\u2013gosh darn those whiny Skywalker boys, the girls are so tough and strong (and they are, they absolutely are, don\u2019t get me wrong).\u00a0But\u2026all the same, guys, I just can\u2019t <\/i>see it that way.\u00a0This girl wasn\u2019t just tempted <\/i>by the Dark Side, she flirted with it<\/i> on like a daily basis for probably years (both before and after she knew what it was). I mean:<\/p>\n

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Leia Organa burns\u00a0<\/i>with anger. She was horribly, incalculably hurt, more than once, and one of the ways she coped with that was by being angry. (In fact, Carrie herself has described Leia as such, and as having played <\/i>Leia as such\u2013as a very wounded and broken girl who is incredibly, incredibly <\/i>angry.) And as we know, according to the Jedi:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFear leads to anger
Anger leads to hate<\/i>
<\/b>Hate leads to suffering<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n

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But that doesn\u2019t make Leia any the weaker for it. In fact, I would even say that it goes to show just <\/i>how strong she was. Because yes<\/i>\u00a0she was hurt. (She was hurt so, so <\/i>badly, so <\/i>many times.) She had every right to be angry, and hurting\u2013and she did. She was <\/i>angry. She did <\/i>hurt. And it would have been so, so easy for her to give into the temptation of the Dark Side through that. Because of that. Because there are so very, very many kinds of temptation\u2013and honestly, with Leia\u2019s anger being such an integral part of her and part of her main coping mechanism, I personally can\u2019t see Leia not <\/i>being tempted by the Dark Side for years\u2013since before she even knew it was truly a Thing, let alone that it had a name. Because oh, how easy it would have been for her anger to consume her\u2013for her rage and her hatred to supplant all else, until she was nothing but a driving force of nature, a wildfire bound in human flesh that burned all in her path.<\/p>\n

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But you know what? She didn\u2019t fall. Despite everything, Leia Organa did not fall. <\/i>And that, to me, shows an incredible <\/i>strength\u2013one that supercedes even a claim that she was never tempted. (Because to me, saying that she was never tempted strips her of the fury of her wrath, the burning of her pain, the blazing of her power. Because to me that says she wasn\u2019t wounded in the very soul <\/i>by what happened to Alderaan, to her mind beneath Vader\u2019s probe, to her heart again and again\u2013and she was<\/i>. Oh, she was. Because to me, taking away Leia\u2019s anger and the rawness of her hurt means taking away what made her such a real character, a real woman, a real survivor.)<\/p>\n

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Ironically enough, it was love that brought her back from that possible path, just as it brought Vader back from the brink. Because I would eat my left shoe if it wasn\u2019t Luke and Han, Chewie, Threepio and Artoo who kept her grounded, kept her here, gave her something other than anger and fear and hatred and revenge to live for.<\/p>\n

Anyway, that\u2019s just my two cents on the matter,<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Thank you, Seren. I wish I could find the article now, but there was a good write-up on women being allowed to be portrayed as monsters rather than the virtuous heroine or the victim. We all have a dark side, a dangerous streak. To deny that women have the capacity for evil is to deny that they are fully human.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Leia Organa has indeed flirted with the dark side. She is still fighting the good fight when we see her in TFA but I don\u2019t think that her inner battle is over and her victories have not come easily. Leia has straddled the line between dark and light a few times, but ultimately clawed her way back to the light before she could be consumed by the darkness. Let\u2019s giver her credit for struggling against her demons, rather than treating her as an empty, innately good character.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When Leia speaks of Snoke\u2019s influence over Ben, you can see on her face that she has empathy for her son. She was disgusted with Vader, she didn\u2019t want to understand him, but she has walked a long road with Ben and the appalling things he does do not shock her, she gets it.<\/p>\n

This is a woman who has done a lot of growing in order to overcome her darker tendencies and it is a battle that she must engage in daily.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Everyone please sit down and be schooled by Seren. Girl knows her Leia meta.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019m barely awake. But hang on. <\/p>\n

What if this is why she\u2019s General, not Jedi?<\/p>\n

Did Luke say he was scared to teach her because of her anger?<\/p>\n

Or?<\/p>\n

Did she look Luke in the eye and ask him not to teach her, because she knows herself and knows her own rage and sees the Dark Side and doesn\u2019t quite know if she can truly trust herself with that kind of power?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

amemait: actual-leia-organa: feralkith: weary-hearted-queen: @the Star Wars fandom: I\u2019d like to throw my two cents in on the whole\u00a0\u201cLeia was never even tempted by the Dark Side\u201d trend that is seemingly going on right now. Firstly, yes, I understand the joke\u2013gosh darn those whiny Skywalker boys, the girls are so tough and strong (and they … <\/p>\n

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